The OG vlogger
In high school Brittney Saunders discovered a website called YouTube and thought, hey, this looks like fun. Fast forward and Britt had amassed a following upwards of 1 million and was working with some of Australia’s biggest brands. Meanwhile, she worked in almost every job you could imagine. Bars, restaurants, cafes, retail, makeup and sport. Trying to find something that she loved. She quit her full time job at 21 to pursue YouTube, and has worked for herself ever since.
One of many ideas
FAYT was one of Britt’s (many) business ideas. “I’d always had a knack for business. Even throughout my late teens. I used to do tans. I set up a tent under my house and was like ‘$15 tans come down and get them.’ I used to do people’s makeup. I made and sold coffee scrubs. I always had this knack to do my own thing, but I didn’t realise at the time it was running my own business,” says Britt. Not thinking too much about it at the time, FAYT was something new for her to try, and why not give it a go?
When I started FAYT it was just one of those little business ideas that I thought I’d try. I didn’t think that one day FAYT could end up being the massive brand that it is today and that we would have tens of thousands of customers from all around the country and the world. And that people would be so happy because a brand exists that is size-inclusive. I never ever thought that it would amount to something like this.”
Brittney Saunders → Owner, FAYT
“I started FAYT in the garage underneath my townhouse that me and my boyfriend were living in at the time. We went down to Bunnings and bought supplies, went to Officeworks and got a desk and a printer and I googled how to ship parcels in Australia.” Before she knew it, FAYT had their first employees, a warehouse, and had signed the lease on a new office/store duo space in Newcastle. Fast forward to today and FAYT has four stores nationwide and a huge online store with more to come.
Curated by community
FAYT has amassed a big community in a small amount of time. A feat Britt credits to her past life as a YouTuber, the community has always been key to her success. Today, FAYT opens stores because their community asks them to. “It was our community saying, ‘Please open another store.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? Open a store, that’s way too hard for us to manage.’ But last year, I’d heard enough of people asking me to open stores in other cities. So I finally took the plunge and decided to do it. I’ve just learned how to do it all along the way.”
A simple POS to help FAYT grow
Having never opened a brick-and-mortar store before, Britt needed simple solutions that were easy to set up, operate and scale. “When I was opening my first retail store I was going in with no idea what I was doing with all of it. But Square’s reporting has made it easy for us to open more and more locations because it gives you such great insights into what are your best sellers, what are your slowest sellers, what you need the most stock of and what you need the least.”
“We also use the Square Loyalty program in-store. It takes two seconds for our customers to sign up and then it rewards them for every dollar that they spend.”
“I’ve had a lot of people say to me over the years that retail is dead. I honestly believe that if you’re doing it well and differently, it isn’t dead at all. And I think FAYT has proven that.”
